News Articles

Got milk? Weightlifters will want to raise a glass after a new study found that milk protein is significantly better than soy at building muscle mass.
The study, conducted by a team of researchers at McMaster University’s Department of Kinesiology, was recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It compared how much muscle protein young men gained after completing a heavy weight workout followed by consumption of equivalent amounts of protein as either fluid skim milk or a soy drink.

Using a trio of space observatories, astronomers may have cracked a 45-year old mystery surrounding two ghostly spiral arms in the galaxy M106 (NGC 4258).
The results, obtained by a team from the University of Maryland (USA), took advantage of the unique capabilities of the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

This is a composite image of spiral galaxy M106 (NGC 4258). Optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey is shown in yellow, radio data from the Very Large Array appears purple, X-ray data from Chandra is coded blue, and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope appears red.

In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of suicide in the U.S., researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that suicide rates among children, women and men of all ages are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the April 2007 issue of The Journal of Trauma.
"We found that where there are more guns, there are more suicides," said Matthew Miller, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at HSPH and lead author of the study.

People watching the Super Bowl who saw how much they had already eaten -- in this case, leftover chicken-wing bones -- ate 27 percent less than people who had no such environmental cues, finds a new Cornell study.
The difference between the two groups -- those eating at a table where leftover bones accumulated compared with those whose leftovers were removed -- was greater for men than for women.
"The results suggest that people restrict their consumption when evidence of food consumed is available to signal how much food they have eaten," said Brian Wansink, the John S.

Society’s disapproval of alcohol, tobacco and gambling means that some investors -- mostly public institutions -- lose out while other investors gain on these undervalued “sin stocks,” according to a study conducted by the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.
Sauder Prof. Marcin Kacperczyk and co-author Prof. Harrison Hong of Princeton University analyzed stock markets and the impact they feel from society’s framework of morals, traditions and laws.

University of Oregon scientists have identified molecular features that determine the light-emitting ability green fluorescent proteins, and by strategically inserting a single oxygen atom they were able to keep the lights turned off for up to 65 hours.
The findings, published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, likely are applicable to most photoswitchable fluorescent proteins, said S. James Remington, professor of physics and member of the UO Institute of Molecular Biology.

Graphic shows models of the on and off structural alignments of a photoswitchable fluorescent protein. Credit: Courtesy S. James Remington

Planting and protecting trees—which trap and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow—can help to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study suggests that, as a way to fight global warming, the effectiveness of this strategy depends heavily on where these trees are planted. In particular, tropical forests are very efficient at keeping the Earth at a happy, healthy temperature.
The researchers, including Ken Caldeira of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology and Govindasamy Bala at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, found that because tropical forests store large amounts of carbon and produce reflective clouds, they are especially good at cooling the planet.

The aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum depends on a bacterial symbiont, Buchnera aphidicola, for amino acids it can't get from plants. The aphid, in turn, provides the bacterium with energy and carbon as well as shelter inside specialized cells.
Such interdependent relationships are not unusual in the natural world.

Female stem cells derived from muscle have a greater ability to regenerate skeletal muscle tissue than male cells, according to a study at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.
The study, which is being published in the April 9 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology, is the first ever to report a difference in regenerative capabilities of muscle stem cells based on sex.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Stony Brook University have received U.S. Patent Number 7,179,448 for developing chimeric, or "combination," proteins that may advance the development of vaccines and diagnostic tests for Lyme disease.

Does orange juice taste sweeter if it's a brighter orange? A new study in the March issue of the Journal of Consumer Research finds that the color of a drink can influence how we think it tastes. In fact, the researchers found that color was more of an influence on how taste was perceived than quality or price information.
"Perceptual discrimination is fundamental to rational choice in many product categories yet rarely examined in consumer research," write JoAndrea Hoegg (University of British Columbia) and Joseph W. Alba (University of Florida). "The present research investigates discrimination as it pertains to consumers' ability to identify difference—or the lack thereof—among gustatory stimuli."

The nonnative invasive grass Microstegium vimineum may hinder the regeneration of woody species in southern forests. Chris and Sonja Oswalt (Forest Service Southern Research Station) and Wayne Clatterbuck (University of Tennessee) set up experiments on a mixed-hardwood forest in southwest Tennessee to study the growth of the invasive grass under different levels of forest disturbance. Study results were published online in the journal Forest Ecology and Management on March 27, 2007.